Big Yields

Hang-em High

2017-03-12T18:09:00.000-06:00

It's daylight savings time. The temps are warming, the bees are bringing in maple pollen.

For us that marks the time to put out the yellow jacket traps.

This time of year all the yellow jackets will be queens. Only the queen yellow jackets survive the winter. In the early spring they leave their hibernation spots to find food and establish nest sites. As soon as the queen's first brood emerges they will take on the hunting responsibility and the queen will stay in the nest to lay eggs.

Trapping queens early in the season eliminates the formation of new yellow jacket nest and reduces the yellow jacket numbers during the summer.

I have issues every fall with yellow jackets attacking/robbing my honey bee hives.

I like to use these type traps:

This one is in the back corner of our 1/4 acre lot. The location of the traps do matter in terms of effectiveness. I haven't tried this spot before. Some spots in the yard catch about a dozen queens while other spots have trapped none during the same timeframe. I bait my traps with purpose made/bought yellow jacket pheromone.

Here is another in the front yard diagonally across the property from the first trap:

This spot under the scotch pine has been the most reliable trapping spot. This trap is about 7 feet off the ground between our driveway and the neighbor's.

Typically, we will have about a half dozen yellow jacket hives established on our property (even with the trapping). The favorite spots for nests are the barbeque, eves of the house and shed, and worse for us is within our rock wall.

George stays alert but has gotten stug in the face twice in past years.

National Seed Swap Day

2017-01-28T15:58:00.001-07:00

This year I am eager to get going in the garden, but the last frost date is still months away and today is National Seed Swap Day!
I went to my first seed swap. I took several seeds saved from the garden.

Here's a list of what I brought.

Vegetables:

Pole Beans

Wax Pole Beans

Scarlet Runner Beans

Long Island Cheese Pumpkins

Cayenne Peppers

Herbs:

Basil- Italian Long Leaf

Hyssop

Calendula

Other:

Siberian Pea Shrub

Broom Corn

Here is what I got!

Vegetables:

Marketmore 76 Cucumbers

Giant Prague Celeriac

Purple Bush Beans

Rattlesnake Pole Beans

Honey boat Squash

Simpson Lettuce

Little Gem Romaine

Herbs:

Chives

Feverfew

Flowers:

Butterfly Plant

Cosmos

Lychnis (Rose Campion)

Marigolds

Nasturtium

Sunflower

Violas

Zinnia

Lots of fun! I got to talk to other gardeners and share stories.

Trap Cropping

2015-02-21T13:52:00.001-07:00

I have a few areas of our lawn which are overrun with weeds. The main weed I am concerned about is black medic. Reading on the internet suggest this weed thrives in heavy compacted soil. The fix is loosening the soil via aeration. Many people in our area/region aerate via plug aerators. This is said to help roots breathe and allows water to infiltrate our clay soil better. The machines can be rented or alternatively hiring someone to do it. The going rate for the service is $50-$75. Renting a machine is in the same range.
I have a small but heavy duty roto tiller so I decided to till a strip of lawn that was overrun with weeds. I added several shovel fulls of compost to the area and incorporated with the tiller.
I am a big fan of natural remedies and have plenty of seeds saved from previous years of gardening. So I decided to sow cover crops into this area. The seeds I chose were amaranth and broomcorn. Knowing that the amaranth can get top heavy and lodge (fall over), I planted that in the center with a ring of broomcorn around it.

The slight purple tint in the center is the amaranth (Hartman's Giant Amaranth) starting to sprout. This picture was taken, June 13, about a week after tilling and sowing.

The broom corn sprouted a little slower than the amaranth.Here is a shot from July 6 (1 month after sowing).

At this point the broom corn, which is actually a type of sorghum rather than corn, is starting to overtake the amaranth.

Another month later, August 7th, (2 months after sowing)

Its all really taking off. There were a few seeds in the compost as evident by the sunflower (Helianthus) and a cucumber plant (not shown). What we discovered was the amaranth leave were getting chewed. I feel the planting density and the leaf chewing was limiting the amaranth growth.

Discovery:

There are actually three hoppers in this image. The one in the center. One to the left and down from the first. And a third, to the right of the first ringed by the yellowing leaf that is out of focus.
There were lots and lots of grasshoppers in the small patch and almost none at all in the main garden just dozens of feet away.
George, our french bulldog, loves grasshopper hunting. He eats most of them, but also enjoys playing with them. This past summer he would do this for hours each day.

As the summer progressed the plants continued to grow. George really appreciated having me or the missus flush out a couple onto the lawn for him to pounce on. He would literally eat a dozen some days.

September 3rd (3 months after sowing):

Sunflowers and amaranth seed heads clearly visible.

A couple of weeks later( Sept 13th). A strong wind blew over the outside plants:

At this point the plants were getting messy and I decided to cut everything down. I used the weed eater (string trimmer) to cut this "grove" down then ran the lawn mower over to get the rest to near ground level. I gathered up all the trimmings and moved them to the compost pile. I then ran the rototiller over the strip and sowed winter rye and hairy vetch into the area. Both of those do really well in low temperatures. Fall growth survives the winter and takes off in the spring when the temperature gets to about 40°F.

Summary:
I started with the intent of clearing a weedy area from the lawn but was really happy with the results of a "feature area" of the lawn. The grasshopper breeding area was great for George and with his help we kept them all out of the vegetable garden.

Beeswax Lotion

2015-01-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot about uses for beeswax. I ended up making some beeswax lotion.
Here's the recipe I used:
6 oz beeswax
6 oz coconut oil
8 oz grape seed oil
2 oz sunflower oil
6 oz steeped caster oil*

*I packed a pint jar full of borage (flowers, leaves, seeds) and topped it up with caster oil. I left this sit/steep for just over a year.
I melted the beeswax in a double boiler.

After the beeswax was melted I added the coconut oil. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature, but melts a lot easier than beeswax. Then added the other oils (all liquid). I poured this into jars and then quickly added vitamin E by piercing gel caps and dripping the vitamin E oil into the prefilled jars. I used 2 pills per 8 oz jar.
To each jar I added the following essential oils. I did this while the mix was still liquid.

2 drops lemon grass oil
1 drop tea tree oil
1 drop tangerine oil

Here is what they looked like:

They ended up a little too firm, so its really salve or a jared lotion bar.
Maybe I'll cut back on the beeswax by about 2 oz next time. Also these are very lemony. I think one drop of lemon grass oil in each would have been plenty.

End of May Garden

2014-05-31T12:44:00.000-06:00

Spring is progressing! We have been blessed with a mix of raining days mixed with warm sunny days. I have not started to water the garden/grass beyond a couple of watering buckets on the newly planted seedlings planted in the garden and some hose applied nitrogen and Revive to the grass.
I've been holding off planting too much in the main garden because I have been waiting the results of a soil analysis. I have since gotten the results and have ordered the correct nutrients to re-mineralize the garden soil. I'll write a separate post on that topic soon.
Here are pictures of the garden.

The large green mass is the hairy vetch. In the foreground there are weeds growing. This is another reason I want to wait another week to plant. I'll rototill these again, the last time was about a month ago, mixing in the fertilizer and compost you see piled to the right.

Here's a close-up of the vetch flowers. The bumble bees seem to like these more than the honey bees.
The garlic is doing well here is a shot of the garlic patch.

The large leaved (weeds) plants in the foreground is borage. I'll let this grow because the honey bees love their flowers.

The above shows the radish, just to the right of the rightmost tee post, see row marketer sticks in foreground. The outside row markers are beets (beetroot) that need to be weeded. I have lots of bindweed throughout the garden. This is another example of why I want to delay planting, allowing me another run at disrupting these weeds as well as getting more nutrients into the soil for the veggies to better compete.
Here is a shot of the seedlings you can gage their growth since the last post.

Else where in the yard and around the neighborhood flowers are booming.

White clover

Sage

Russian olive tree

Locust tree blooms

Sweet yellow clover

And I guess I have to show my projects for next year. Our lawn,soil, is obviously compacted. I will have to aerate the lawn this fall as the black medic, small yellow pom pom flowers, is taking over.

black medic and bindweed flowers

Snow today gone today

2014-05-12T18:28:00.001-06:00

It snowed all day yesterday, May 11. This morning it was still snowing. It was really wet snow. Here is a picture from this morning just before 7am.

The lilacs flanking the garden just started blooming. Here is a picture from almost 12 hours later (Monday 6pm).

Just a trace of snow left on the picnic table.
The hairy vetch got squished down but it will pop back up within a day or two.

Spring Garden

2014-05-11T19:53:00.000-06:00

Our gardening is getting started. I've posted several posts about the bees because there is not much in terms of planting that can happen in Colorado before Mother's day. Here is a few pictures from yesterday May 10th.

The garlic is obvious with globe alliums to their right (front side of the garden). Further back is a growing patch of hairy vetch. In the foreground with the two green and white "t" posts laying on in the dirt are a couple of rows of beets (beetroot) and a row of radish. They were planted a week earlier and have a bit of compost over the top to keep them moist.

Here is a better shot of the hairy vetch. There is a few crimson clover blossoms in the very front. The vetch will flower in a couple of weeks. The bumble bees really like the nectar from these flowers. After it has flowered for a while I will rip the vines out and use the vines as mulch for the tomatoes that will be planted here. The hairy vetch mulch keeps the soil cooler and prevents all the moisture from evaporating. I'll leave the soil undisturbed (vs tilling) to leave as much of the hairy vetch root system in place. It fixes nitrogen and this should breakdown into the soil feeding the microbes and thus the tomatoes. There is some vetch mulch in the previous picture around the globe allium, it drys very fine.
This planting is an example of cover cropping. I planted this hairy vetch in early August with oats and some fava bean seeds. These were all left over seeds and just hand broadcasted and raked in slightly. The oats were the first to grow, and take over. See November post . The hairy vetch barley grew last fall while the oats grew almost 2 feet tall. The oats died during the winter and the vetch came back to life earlier this spring. The decomposing biomass is supposed to be really good for the soil, and an additional benefit is the early season green.
To the right of the vetch is one of my new favorites, that I have written about, hyssop. It is starting to green from the bottom up. I need to clean the dead twigs out and weed around these. The rock wall seems to warm the soil at the front edge of the garden. Its really popular with the weeds. This year I've already weeded in front of the Hyssop 3 times. The three worst offenders are: crab grass, bind weed, and Canadian thistles. I've planted some hyssop seeds for more plants this year (see below).

Above is a picture from today, Mother's Day. Its all covered by snow. Its expected to get cold tonight and tomorrow 24 degrees F. Then after Tuesday, we should be done with the freezing weather. The forecast for next weekend is 85F.
I've got the seedlings started in jiffy peat pellets.

All sorts of goodies that you can read about this summer. I don't have grow lights for these indoors except for a 2x2 ft florescent fixture above our clothes dryer. Its not really strong enough to prevent the seedlings from getting long and stringy. I bring the whole lot of them out on warmer days. On days that I have to work I leave them on the north side of the house where they don't get direct sunlight but it is brighter than the washroom. This location also keep these tender "babies" from getting cooked.

When I get home I move them to a direct sun location. I always keep them prop'ed open to let the heat escape. Almost forgot them outside last night! The piece of cement is to help keep the lid grounded in case of high winds.

Here is one of the hive splits (picture from yesterday). The queen should have hatched Friday or Saturday (yesterday) and should be ready for her mating flights later this week when it warms up. You can see the entrance is mostly closed up. This is to limit access to robbers from other hives. A smaller entrance is easier for them to defend. I haven't seen any robbing going on and the quart of sugar water has almost been ignored. This quart was filled two weeks ago. Last year my bees drank a quart of 1:1 sugar/water every two days. There has been a really great apple bloom going on so I'm sure they are getting better nectar. With the snow and cold temps we'll see how long the cup of sugar water lasts.

Dead queens

2014-05-08T20:51:00.000-06:00

Dead queens are good and bad.
We've had issues with yellow jackets buzzing too close to us in our driveway. We have a pine tree that attracts pine scale (a sap sucking insect). The scale exudes honeydew that the yellow jacket adore. I've gotten stung waving my hands at them trying to shoo them away from me when getting into my truck. This is the second year in a row that I have baited traps for yellow jackets in the early spring.
The theory goes that all of them are queens in the early spring. Only the queen Western Yellow Jackets over winter, all the rest of the castes (drones and workers) die the previous fall.
Here are five dead queens. They are all larger than the workers that come later in the season.

By eliminating the queens in the early season I can stop them from each forming colonies that develop into dozens or hundreds of yellow jackets. That is what I call "good" dead queens.
Now for the "bad".
I have been keeping honey bees and decided to increase my number of colonies. The bees actually do the deciding. When "they" decide to increase the number of colonies it is called swarming. This happens in the spring when there is plenty of forage (flowers) for both the mother colony and for the swarm that leaves the mother colony. The swarm is comprised of the queen and approximately half of the workers in the "mother" hive. Prior to leaving the the queen (and workers) start a new queen. She is laid just like a worker bee, as a fertilized egg but is fed an enriched diet of royal jelly. The workers create an enlarged cell for the queens to develop in. They are larger than the worker bees thus need the larger cell to develop correctly. Here is a picture of a queen cell (on the right), it is said these cells look like peanuts. The queen is pupating inside.

Here is a close up of queen cells. These are formed usually in the spring and an indication of the possibility of impending swarming.

Sorry for the rotation on the images, queen cells always face downward. The two queen cups are the starts of enlarged cells. There is also a couple of bees in the shot with groovy colored pollen (red and light yellow).
Both of these queen cells were empty (no egg).
There can be only one queen bee in a hive. I opened my new nuc, (short for nucleus hive) and saw 5 queen cells fully capped.
The first queen to hatch destroys the other queens while they are still in their cells. The problem with this is that only one survives and in my case that was a queen with a malformed wing. The issue is that queens fly off to mate in the week after emerging from their cells (and after killing any rivals). With a malformed wing this queen will never mate and therefore will never lay fertilized eggs.
Here she is:

See the drone with the big eyes at 3 o'clock.
Here is a closeup of the queen.

You can see one of her left wings is shriveled or chewed. I did what I had to and pinched her dead! Within a minute I could tell the whole nuc hive knew because their tone changed from a calm hum to a load buzz!
It takes several weeks for a freshly laid egg to develop into a queen bee. Killing a queen without a ready replacement sets back any new egg laying by about a month. Since all the eggs in this hive came from my other hives and since they are all past the point where the workers could change those larvae's diet to one of 100% royal jelly, I had to transfer some freshly laid eggs from one of the other hives so that this hive could start from scratch. So I will wait for the new batch of queens to emerge and do battle.
Eggs were placed into this hive on April 26th. I peaked in on May 3rd and saw they had drawn out and capped 3 or more queen cells. The worker bees probably selected eggs that had just turned into larvae (day 4 after being laid as eggs). This means that the new queens should emerge today or tomorrow (16-17 days after being laid). This might make a neat video, a true battle royal! It will take a couple more days before the new queen goes on her mating flights assuming the winner survives the melee.
Here's a shot of one of the main sources of food for the bees has been for the past few weeks.

This picture was taken 4/20. The apple bloom is past its peak as of today. Approximately two weeks prior to the apples, the crab apples were really strong as well. That made for four weeks of solid prolific food for the bees. This time of year there is lots of food for the bees. We do have some possible freezing weather in a couple of days, but fingers crossed, it wont kill any of the blossoms.

Why do we steal

2014-04-13T09:35:00.001-06:00

To get sweet stuff, Honey!

I pulled these honey frames out of my hives yesterday. Then crushed and strained them.
I'll bottle the honey once it has had a chance to separate from the wax. There is about a gallon of honey here.
I'm also trying to split my hives so that I can move a couple of hives to another location. When split into a new hive without a queen, the worker bees will select a young larvae and feed it royal jelly. 21 days later out pops a queen. There are plenty of drones, male bees, in my hives so I'm sure its time. Here is a photo of my new hive.

I dumped a bunch of bees from the other two hives into this one, its really stuffed full of bees, I'd say 4-5 lbs of bees. Some of the bees were returning to their old hives, but I'm sure there will still be plenty inside. There is also honey, pollen and freshly laid worker bee eggs.
While looking in the other hives I found the queen laying eggs on one of the combs, so I moved her to another frame and took the frame with the new eggs. I've been getting really good at spotting the queen. Last year I had some difficulty locating the queens in each of my hives (1 per hive), but this year it seems pretty easy.
While looking through the strong hive I saw a swarm cell. Swarm cells are built by the worker bees during the spring, usually. They are larger cells, generally located at the edges or bottom of the comb(s). This is where they typically raise another queen. Once the existing queen lays an egg into the queen cell. She (old queen) will depart with half of the worker bees to start a new bee colony somewhere else. Obviously I don't want to loose half a hive. So I will keep an eye on this cell and make another split if it looks like they are getting ready to depart.

Royalty

2014-04-08T21:54:00.001-06:00

Its still too cold to start gardening, back and forth between snow, rain, and 60-70's. I've been following and identifying the local bloom watching what pollens the bees are bringing home to eat.
Its been warm enough to open the hives and check how things are progressing. I did this on March 16th. One hive is really strong, the other not so strong.This was apparent just watching the traffic at the front of the hives. My guess is that there was a 20:1 difference in traffic strong hive to weak hive. Upon opening the weaker hive it had a small population with the majority of the bees only 2 combs vs 8 combs in the more populous hive. I added a pollen patty to each hive at this time. Pollen is used by the nurse bees to make bee bread which they eat and feed to the larvae. Pollen patties are manufactured pollen substitutes. these help the bees build up their populations sooner especially when it is too cold to gather natural pollen.
I was shocked to see the difference in the two hives and with it getting dark I was worried that keeping the hives open for too long for fear of chilling the bees. The next warm day was Wednesday, March 19 so I took a long lunch from work and came home for a quick hive manipulation. I removed two combs from the populous top bar hive that had lots of emerging bees on each comb and transferred those into the weaker hive to boost their numbers. It when really well and things are picking up in the weaker hive. I did also see both queens. Here is a shot of one of them:

She's center right. Here is a close-up:

Most of the bees around her are really young. You can tell because their faces look fuzzier than the older bees. I think the older ones are the one that appears to be climbing over the queen and the one pointed up real close to the queen's tail.
Most of the others look like they have smaller eyes and more face fuzz.
The brownish comb that the queen is standing on is capped workers they are anywhere from 8 to 21 days after being laid as eggs. You can see in the above picture there aren't a lot of capped workers as evidence by all the open (uncapped) cells. The hive needs to keep plenty of bees to warm these capped bee (larvae), so with low numbers of emerged bees the queen will limit how many eggs she lays when the temperatures are still cold. This because when it gets cold the bees huddle together to stay warm. The colder it gets the tighter they huddle. If their cluster gets too small to cover some capped larvae, those larvae freeze. The other interesting fact is that this comb has no stored honey or pollen. There is plenty of honey in this hive towards the back, probably 50 lbs. When its cold the honey will freeze and the bees need to warm it up to move it from where it is frozen. This takes a lot of energy. The bees have been busy collecting water to help them liquefy their stored honey and make bee bread (pollen).
Here is a saucer that I fill with water for the bees to access. I'd rather they drink in my yard than on of my neighbors.

Both hives have plenty of honey. I expect the dandelions to be in full bloom within a month. The dandelions flowers are a great dependable source of nectar and pollen, that is followed by fruit trees weather permitting. Last year a late April deep freeze (17 degrees) killed all the fruit tree blossoms before they could open. So I made a judgement call that I could take some honey from the weaker hive (they still have plenty after my plunder). Here is what I helped myself to:

It was about a gallon after straining.
So here are some pictures of blooms from our neighborhood:

Lupine

Not sure what these are but this house has a nice fence row of them. It was too cold for the bees this day so I didn't see any of them out this morning (April 5th).
Here is a bar from the more populous hive. These raised cells, often called bullet shaped, indicate that there are drone larvae (males) capped inside.

The drone's cells, approx 30 on the left, are larger diameter as well as dome capped. The orange colored cells in the center of this comb are filled, partially, with pollen. Both of these items, pollen and drones indicate that this hive is confident that they can make it through the spring till the next bloom. The drones don't do any work in the hive and if the hive, with a good laying queen, was struggling they wouldn't be raising drones. The weak hive had no drones being raised. That means that this stronger hive has a high probability of passing its genetic code, via the drones, to unmated queens in the neighborhood. There are many more drone cells in this hive, I would guess 200. I used this picture because the other pictures I took with drone cell had lots of bees covering the cells.
Here is a picture of the queen from the strong hive, center right:

The bees with their heads in the cells are feeding larvae. The older/larger larvae can be seen in the upper left of the image, they are curled. They will soon be capped by the workers, at which time those capped larvae will spin cocoons and pupate.
Here is a close up of the larvae:

And here are the eggs, they are at the edge of my vision and look like tiny grains of rice:

Thats all for now. I'll find out what those flowers are and be back with more very soon!

Pollen Identification

2014-03-09T10:54:00.000-06:00

It was a warm sunny day yesterday and the bees were bringing in lots of pollen. Can anyone help identify where this pollen comes from?

I would guess the pollen is from a tree blossom but not sure. The only trees that seem to be in bloom are the maples.

I did see my first dandelion flower yesterday, but only one, here it is:

I also saw this crocus flower:

Here is the garlic I spoke of in my last post:

Early Pollen Source

2014-03-08T07:07:00.000-07:00

I took a walk this evening just before dark and saw these maple blooms. In my last post I mentioned that I saw the bees bringing in pollen that I believed was from maple. Here is some more evidence. These pictures are from the same tree a few hundred feet from our house.

You can see the stamen (white) and anthers (yellow-brown tips). The pollen is found on the anthers

It is early March and it freezes every night. Yesterday we got a couple of inches of snow. This and the previous snow started as rain then changed to snow. It still accumulates and freezes hard over night. It is not uncommon for us to get very deep spring snows. Still not much gardening to be done.

I did see garlic poking through the soil yesterday to the right of the tomato baskets. So it will soon be time to get the early stuff planted!

First flowers of the year

2014-02-23T11:03:00.001-07:00

We were out walking yesterday and spotted our first flowers of the year. After a few minutes of internet searching I discovered the its name. It is Erodium cicutarium, redstem filaree.
Thanks MU see link:University of Missouri Extension

I found several of these plants near our home. This picture was taken on February 22, 2014 in our neighborhood in Boulder County, Colorado. I saw many plants flowering in southern exposed undisturbed (weedy) soil (clay). We are having a normal winter with snow on the ground weekly, either from larger snows (+5 inches) that take several days to melt, or smaller (<2 inches) that melt the following 24 hrs.
I didn't see any honey bees on the flowers, although I did see many bees flying in and out of my hives. The temperature is low, for bees, at about 55F.

I believe this is pollen coming into the hive.

I think this is maple pollen. My wife says she saw bees on a maple tree in our neighborhood. Below is a picture of the flower buds. I didn't see any bees on this tree, nor did I see any open flower buds on this tree but there must be somewhere on the canopy or on other trees.

Here is a link to Wikipedia that I use to help identify individual pollens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollen_source
Spring fever has officially started.

Winter Buzz

2014-02-16T16:18:00.001-07:00

Wow, I was dumping some kitchen scraps into the compost pile and noticed some raiding.

They aren't really eating it just messing with the coffee grounds.

They are flying and bringing home what I'm guessing is propolis.

Otherwise they seem to be doing good. Both hives had bees flying in and out. The temperature was in the low 60's.
Its still too early to plant stuff outside but the warm days are a nice change to melt some of the snow.

Cure for Colds

2014-01-03T15:13:00.000-07:00

We've all heard that garlic and honey are natural cures. Years ago a friend gave me a jar of honey that contained garlic cloves. The story that went with it was, 'when you feel a cold or sore throat on the way, eat a tablespoon of honey with a clove of garlic'.
So feeling great on a nice warm day, I decided to make a couple of jars of cure for a "rainy day".

Here is my work station. I started peeling the garlic by hand, the red plastic can is my compost pail. Even though its January the skins on the garlic are still cumbersome to remove. I remembered something I read about peeling garlic...

That's where the cardboard box and air compressor come into the picture.
I found it best to break the garlic bulbs into individual cloves. Then blast them with air. Then work the garlic skins by hand. Then go back to the compressed air. Then finally pick at the last bits of garlic peels that remained. I peeled about 6 bulbs this way pretty fast.
I cut the ends of the garlic and split the large cloves in half. The next step was adding honey.

Here's an expert tip: Do this step in the house where its warmer!
It actually wasn't that cold today. The sun was in and out of the clouds. I peeked at the outside of the bee hives. They were busy bringing home what looks like propolis.

This is what the finished product looks like. I'm sure it will keep away vampires and the not-sick people too.

Garden Trellis

2013-12-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

My main walk in my garden is next to the fence at the North most end of the garden. The walk is being taken over by my back neighbor's peach tree. My neighbors told me they are okay with me trimming the branches on my side of the fence. Since they are directly North of us, the peach tree naturally grows out direction. The peach tree is planted just a foot or two North of the 5 foot wooden fence.
Here are a few pictures showing the progression of the peach tree's growth this summer. This April we experienced a late deep freeze which killed all the blooms of all the neighborhood fruit trees. Last year this tree (and every other fruit tree) was loaded with fruit. When loaded with fruit the branches hang even lower.

2012

2013

Dec 2013 New Trellis

The back part near the fence supports the peach tree. I built that a couple of weeks ago. The front part, I built yesterday. I found the 2x4x 12's in the cull pile at Lowes.

Here is a sampling of what I hope to grow on the new trellis:

Yard Long bean tee-pee

A grip of Yard Long Beans

Green beans! In 2013, they climbed the amaranth, 2 sisters style!

Who knows I may even live on the edge and test out the structure with PUMPKINS!

Flower Pictures

2013-12-22T10:46:00.002-07:00

We got some seeds this year. Here are some flower pictures from this year's garden.

Danish Flag Poppy

The few flowers that bloomed didn't do too well. As soon as the flowers started to bloom the birds would rip out all the pedals.
If the flowers come back this year we will mulch much better to keep the soil moist. Maybe that will help the more plants get to the flowering stage and out pace the birds.

Winter Dahlia Storage

2013-11-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

Here are the Dahlias August 25, 2013.
I planted the tubers in a row. Next year I think the row will go across so the flowers can be better seen. Every week since they began to bloom I cut several to take to work.

Here is what they looked like earlier today, Nov. 3, 2013. The temperature has been consistently freezing at night. Today was in the high 60's so a good day to dig up the tubers for winter storage. We are expecting a few inches of snow in the next few days so, no time like the present.

Here is a close-up of the dug up tuber with the soil washed away.

Here's the lot of them trimmed and washed. I let them dry in the sun for a few hours to remove the water.

Trim down the stalks some more, wrap them in old t-shirts, then stuff them in a plastic sack in the crawlspace till next spring.
I will actual try to mist the t-shirts in the winter to add some moisture.
Several years ago I omitted the plastic bags, worrying about mold. but the tubers looked very shriveled. Our climate is very dry even in the crawl space. So back to the plastic bags.
I don't have any pictures to show but when I was forking the tubers from the ground, I saw lots of worms in with the tubers and roots. I've seen this before. I think the dahlias must put lots of nutrients into the soil for the worms. The worms are really worked into the mass of roots. My soil is very heavy clay, so I use the garden hose with a sprayer and really work the "soil" from the root mass before putting them in storage.
I would like to take this opportunity to ask Santa for a proper basement with a cold room/root cellar for winter storage, although the crawl space under the stairs works pretty well.
One last close-up of the sun lovers.

Late season hive

2013-10-27T20:57:00.000-06:00

The bees are still going at it collecting pollen an protecting their hive. here are a few pictures I snapped today. The yellow jacket trap still is going strong 20 ft in front of my two hives.

You can see the multitude of yellow jackets captured.

I continue to smash them with my fly swatter in front of the hives. The above is about two weeks of captures. our temperatures are in the 20's at night an in the mid 60's during the days.

Here are the girls going at it with a "robber" yellow jacket

And still they bring in pollen. Tomorrow we have snow in the forecast and a high of 46.

I think this is dandelion pollen.

You don't need too dig deep

2013-09-29T12:34:00.000-06:00

Yeah! Here we are Fall, Autumn, Harvest season!
Here are a few sample pics of some harvesting that's going on here in Boulder.

Adirondack Blue Potatoes, hard to spell good to eat! I Got these from Walmart, 5 plants for $3.98 . The ground is soaking wet (clay soil) the picture has probably 2 plants worth of potatoes. About $1.60 if my math is correct.

Cucumbers and beets, Yum!
These cukes are a little small but I've let many of them go too long so I'm being cautious and picking early.
Next year I need to stage my planting over a couple of weeks verses planting all the cucumbers at once.
If you look close at the beet greens you can make out a stringy weed. That's bind weed. It has taken over in the garden with all the rain we've gotten lately (yes I'm blaming the rain).

Above is an August planting of Burpee's Cherry Belle Radish

This is actually 3 squash plants taking over

The Cocozelle Squash continues to produce reliably. We are trying to cook them into everything from stir fry to zucchini bread. We still have enough to hand some over the fence to our gardening friends.

The rain and the hay fork have done wonders in the past few weeks to the compost pile.

The asparagus bed is not taking off like I hoped but I realize this can take some years. I continue to add compost and weed on a semi regular basis. It is luckily located closest to the compost pile.

Above is the rhubarb raised bed. It is doing wonderful!

The honeybees are still working the borage. The borage falls down but continues to grow and bloom until it freezes. Its been blooming for several months now.
I've heard that borage flowers refill their nectaries within minutes, which is why the honeybees love it. However below is a close up of this girl with what looks to be borage pollen.

Does anyone know if borage produces pollen?

Another winner is the Blue Hyssop from Baker Heirloom it has bloomed continuously for months. This is a perennial here in zone 5, it is in its second year. The flowers are fewer and fewer in the season as the seeds develop. I'll spread these seeds to other areas of the garden to get more of this for the bees.

Drones

2013-09-21T19:35:00.000-06:00

Well this past week I've seen several drones dead in front of the hives and figured it was the girls kicking out the boys due to the end of the season, see Kicked to the Curb post.
Today I sat out next to the hives and watched what was going on and heard, and saw, many (dozens) drones flying in and out of the hives. Drones are somewhat larger than worker bees and make a louder sound when flying. The workers were bringing in lots of yellow and orange pollen. This indicates that they are still raising young.
The drones were still flying in and out indicating they are still looking for virgin queens to mate with. Kind of late in the season but I imagine this has to do with the fact that queens can die any any point in the season and if a hive need to requeen itself to survive this can happen at any time of the season.


Pollen

Drones (2) notice the big eyes

MF Western Yellow Jackets

2013-09-21T18:52:00.000-06:00

Why do we hate yellow jackets?

Here are my two middle fingers, sorry no disrespect intended. On the right my finger tip is clearly inflamed. This is because of a western yellow jacket bit /sting. I was waving my hands shooing them out of my way when ka-bam right in the tip of my right middle finger. We have a scotch pine in our front yard which has been afflicted by pine scale for at least the 4 years that we have lived in this house. The scale exudes honey dew which attracts the western yellow jackets and other insects. As a beekeeper and gardener, I have a high tolerance for insects, but the western yellow jacket... lets just say its not a love hate relationship.
I have two yellow jacket traps which I bait with pheromone bait. And believe me I have them baited early in the year to attract as many queens as possible. I even sit next to the bee hives with a fly swatter playing "whack a wasp" as they seem to troll for hive debris, dead bees, in front of the hives. I've even seen them sneak into the hive past the guard bees.
Once you smash one wasp it seems to attract another, see below.
All beekeepers know they are bad news in hives, as they rob honey and whatever else they can.
Today's total: Yellow jacket stings =1 ; splatted yellow jackets = 12
I'm still not happy with those numbers

dead yellow jackets

Boys kicked to the curb

2013-09-20T19:37:00.000-06:00

Three weeks ago it was in the 90's. Last week a record 17 inches of rain. Last night it dipped into the 50's, you know what that means. The boys are kicked to the curb.

You can identify the drone, he's top left with the enormous eyes. The workers realize its getting cold signaling the end of the season. This means no more swarms and without the need to breed queens, all drones can be kicked out.
Drones can feed themselves and must rely on the worker bees (females) to feed them. To a bee hive they are an expense and come winter an expense that can be eliminated.

A quick look at the ground in front of the hive shows several dead drones evicted some time earlier.

I mentioned the rain it splashed lots of dirt up onto the hives. The bottom of my hives are open with 1/8 inch screen. I closed them up for the winter, actually fall starts in 2 days. But I also put down some weed barrier to cover the ground which is a rock covered soil. Here is a picture of the "dirt barrier"

The dirt on the gray barrier is the dirt that washed off the hives in the past week, it rained more.

Here is are pictures of Boulder Creek (at hwy 287) flood well out of its banks.

First Zucchini

2013-07-28T21:23:00.000-06:00

It is late July and I'm just picking my first zucchini. Its a Cocozelle Zucchini from Botanical Interests. http://www.botanicalinterests.com/products/view/3107/Squash-Summer-Cocozelle-Organic-HEIRLOOM-Seeds/srch:cocozelle
This late harvest is caused solely by late planting.
This variety produce fruit at a slightly lower rate than some zucchini I've grown, so my two plants should be plenty for my wife and I. My guess is two plants will produce one fruit every third or fourth day from now till first frost in October. The seeds came from a pack that is a few years old, but the plants seem to be doing very well so far.

There it is on the mulch. Perfect size. You can see it has stripes. There's another about 3 inches long that should double in size in two days.
Its been a hot summer and I didn't want to cook inside even though it rained today and its cooler than usual.

I ended up making pizza with the zucchini and a farmers' market squash. I used the bread machine to make pizza dough.
I added the rolled out dough with olive oil to a cast iron skillet and put it on the barbeque. I precooked the dough and flipped it before adding the pizza sauce and toppings.

Zucchini Pizza!
This worked great! The house stayed cool and the pizza was delicious.

Here is the finished product. The crust was a little thick. It was excellent with a little honey drizzled on it.
Yum Yum Yum.

Plunder from the bees

2013-07-21T14:35:00.001-06:00

A couple of weeks ago I opened the hives to check on the bees. I wanted to make sure the hives still had available space. Lack of space can lead to swarming, meaning the work force leaves the hive and therefore lower honey yields. While opening the first hive, I encountered several of the top bars near the rear of the hive had comb attached to the sides of the hive, and single comb spanning across multiple bars. Until several bars are out of the hive there isn't a lot of room for the beekeeper to see into the hive. So this, coupled with my inexperience I broke one bar's comb. The comb filled with nectar fell into the hive causing a stir. I reached in to pull it out and left it in a large tupperware for the bees to reclaim, but it seemed that they didn't want anything to do with it. I did pull out a bar with honey that was capped as well. I left the second hive unplundered until this weekend.
Here is what I plundered from the bees.

The cut up comb is in an 8 x 8 pyrex, that came from today's harvest from the hive that got robbed several weeks ago. The other three bars are honey comb from the second hive.
I use the crush and strain method of honey harvest. I use a knife to cut off and "crush" cut into bitty pieces.

That's one crushed honeycomb turned out to be just over a quart of honey. One of the bars was quite a bit thicker than the others. My experience base on a total of 5 top bars harvested in the past two weeks, says that each full top bar holds more than 1 quart and less than 1 3/4 quart. I used a 2 gallon bucket with a strainer bag then pour the honey into mason jars.

I could maximize the amount harvested, but since the bees built very straight comb on these bars I decided to leave some for the bees to keep them on the straight.

These bars with sealed honey, and dripping sticky honey, are returned to the hive. The cut cells drip honey into the hive but the bees clean it up really fast and rebuild comb without missing a step. The key is with nice straight base they will build straight comb!
Total harvest: 4 quart jars, 2 pints, and approx one more quart still straining in the bucket ~ 6 quarts.

There is probably at least that much honey left in the hive that I haven't harvested from the bees figuring that I want to leave plenty for the bees for the winter. It is still July (July 21) and I would expect there is plenty of time for the bees to keep up the good work and collect more nectar. I think the bees are almost out of tree flowers to harvest. Linden trees are done blossoming and the golden rain trees are still in bloom but I'm guessing nearing there end. There are lots of flowers, Russian Sage, clover, and others. I planted a couple hundred square feet of buckwheat which has sprouted and is a good source of dark nectar. So long story short I think there is plenty of available nectar for the bees the rest of the summer and fall.

Here's a picture showing a bar on the scale. That's 4 lbs after subtracting the wooden top bar. The bar is 18 inches long.